
Anna B Savage
You & i are Earth
City Slang
Jan 22, 2025 Web Exclusive
On the cover of Anna B Savage’s new album You & i are Earth, the English singer/songwriter peers up impishly from a bed of moss and ferns, blue eyes fixed upon the viewer. It’s a stark contrast to the cover images on her previous two records, in|FLUX (2023) and A Common Turn (2021), where her face is obscured in some vital way—inverted and looking askance in the former, wings covering her eyes on the latter. This shift is felt just as strongly in the content of You & i are Earth, which sways and swells like the first gentle exhale of spring after a long winter.
Savage’s writing has always been diaristic and strongly narrative, her skill for metaphor matched equally by her skill for distilling her griefs and anxieties into frank, cutting lines. But You & i are Earth is full of love songs, both to a person and to Ireland (her home of the last several years), and it’s a joyful thing to hear the peaceful contentment and sense of wonder that emanates from Savage across the record’s 10 songs.
Savage’s infatuation with the natural world is apparent across her catalogue, where birds, trees, and water are integral to her lyrical universe. But where before these things were spoken of as omens, here they are signs of magic, inviting closer inspection of an ancient land, language, and music. “Is there a home out here for me forever?” she asks on “Donegal,” her crystalline voice soaring over accompaniment clearly inspired by traditional Irish styles.
Over gorgeous musical arrangements that feature contemporary Irish musicians and gentle guitar work reminiscent of Nick Drake, Savage creates an intimate, enchanted world, where footsteps are muffled by moss and magic—even the mundane sort—waits behind every tree. (www.annabsavage.bandcamp.com)
Author rating: 8/10
Average reader rating: 7/10
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